Philosophy, Animality and the Life Sciences

A study of pathological concepts of animal life in Continental philosophy from Bergson to Haraway

Using animals for scientific research is a highly contentious issue that Continental philosophers engaging with ‘the animal question’ have been rightly accused of shying away from. Now, Wahida Khandker asks, can Continental approaches to animality and organic life make us reconsider our treatment of non-human animals?

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By following its historical and philosophical development, Khandker argues that the concept of 'pathological life' as a means of understanding organic life as a whole plays a pivotal role in refiguring the human-animal distinction.

Key Features

Looks at the assumptions underpinning about debates about science and animals, and our relation to non-human animals

Analyses the relation between the purpose and limitations of research in the life sciences and the concepts of animality and organic life that the sciences have historically employed

Explores the significance of key thinkers such as Bergson, Canguilhem, Foucault and Haraway, and opens up the complex and difficult writings of Alfred North Whitehead on this subject

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Contents

AcknowledgementsIntroductionChapter 1: Forces of Nature: Evolution, Divergence, DecimationChapter 2: Pathological Life and the Limits of Medical PerceptionChapter 3: Violence, Pathos and Animal Life in European Philosophy and Critical Animal StudiesChapter 4: From Animal-Machines to Cybernetic OrganismsChapter 5: Organicism and Complexity: Whitehead and KauffmanChapter 6: Aped, Mongrelised and Scapegoated: Adventures in Biopolitics and Transgenics in Haraway’s Animal WorldsEpilogue: A Vicious CircleBibliography.

About the Author

Wahida Khandker is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has contributed to numerous philosophy journals.

Reviews

Ranging across a remarkable array of crucial texts in the recent history of philosophy and the life sciences, this book provides both an invaluable critical overview of the work of Whitehead, Canguilhem, Bergson, Haraway, and others on the question of "life" and at the same time pursues its own highly original intervention in how we can think our ontological and ethical relation to non-human beings.

- Cary Wolfe, Dunlevie Professor of English and Founding Director, 3CT: Center for Critical and Cultural Theory, Rice University